The Development of English Law, Essay Example

Introduction

It is inevitable that the laws of any nation or culture evolve to meet ideological and societal concerns.  Law is essentially the framework in place to express and address how the society perceives justice, and is therefore reactive in nature.  It is also usually highly complex in its evolutions, as cultures change and ideas regarding justice and criminality change as well.  The processes are then both identifiable and somewhat vague; the creation and passing of law is typically documented and widely known, yet the influences going to that creation are frequently blurred by the ongoing and complicated interactions of the society.  The history of law in England is not free from these difficulties, yet the sheer extent of that history permits greater understanding.  For many centuries, law in England has continually adapted in recognizable ways, merely by virtue of the fact that the nation’s history has undergone the dramatic changes occurring in any society moving from semi-barbarism to an evolved and modern republic.  In the following, it will be seen that perhaps no better model in Western civilization exists than the English, in evaluating how external influences have shaped the law itself.

Discussion

If England’s history provides an unparalleled expansive framework for viewing how laws evolve from external influence, there is within it an equally extraordinary example: the Magna Carta.  Perhaps no legal document is more famous in Western law, nor has had a greater impact, and the complex circumstances regarding its creation illustrate how powerfully external forces can shape law.  It is commonly believed that the charter of 1215, setting for the first time limits on the king’s authority, was something of a “grassroots” action, generated by a widespread revolt of ordinary citizens abused by the king.  This is true, but only marginally so, and the greater reality is that the charter was the result of conflict only within the highest levels of the society.  It was not an early, British “Declaration of Independence”; it was a carefully crafted effort to secure property rights for the wealthy.  Moreover, it is important to understand that the charter was not a response to one king’s insatiable greed.  If it is true that King John’s character was marked by unconscionable behavior and seemingly outrageous despotism, it is also true that English government of the period was under extreme strain.  English holdings on the continent were extensive, and this was not a government equipped to rule over what was essentially a European empire.  By way of meeting extraordinary financial demands, John exercised his prerogative and simply seized lands from powerful barons, which was an extension of his substituting his will for rudimentary, existing common law.  He took the children of nobles as hostages when he felt loyalty to him was wavering, he appropriated church lands, and he hanged war prisoners at will (Siegan 6-7). In essence, King John took the prior law establishing divine right to a level so extreme, rebellion was triggered.  If, as history notes, John’s agreeing to the provisions of the charter were nothing more than a stalling measure, the signing of the Magna Carta was a momentous occasion in the history of law.  In basic terms, this document deprived the king of the power to take from any English person land or life, or violate fundamental human rights.  Most interestingly, while the creation of it was, again, primarily a response from the wealthy, it secured legal liberties for all free men (Siegan  9). Consequently, the influences of an angry minority in England had repercussion in the law that would extend throughout the Western world.

Another instance of external forces shaping English law is evident in how societal feeling shifted policy before and during the reign of Elizabeth I, as these years also illustrate how inextricably connected were the arenas of faith, culture, and the law.  On one level, the law had reflected radical changes in the rights of worship before Elizabeth’s ascension.  Her brother, Edward VI, revised English society in his brief lifetime to mandate Protestant worship and outlaw Catholicism.  Only a few years later, Queen Mary reversed this entire legal apparatus in 1554 – with the help of a bullied Parliament – and enacted heresy laws against practicing Protestants.  These laws, stretching well back before the resign of Henry and modified to accommodate the agenda of each regime, were both civil and ecclesiastical constructs.  The courts, in other words, worked hand in hand with church officials to identify and prosecute offenders, with the penalties for professed Protestantism often leading to death.  What is important here is that the process, fully enabled in an era when little distinction was made between church and state, was thoroughly legal in nature and execution.  The church official identifying the heretic usually followed legal form and secured a writ, which was the first step toward obtaining either a recantation or an execution (Wickins 158).

It is difficult in this arena to determine, in fact, the presence and weight of external influences upon English law, simply because they existed in every sphere of life.  On one level, the English people were thrown into confusion; many devout Protestants had fought for Mary’s right to the throne, even as the state’s persecution of them emphasized how treason was interpreted from deviation in worship alone.  On another, a particularly potent external force resided in the European Catholicism infiltrating England in the form of Philip of Spain, Mary’s husband.  This, in fact, was linked to the older force of that Catholic influence on Mary during her own years of being persecuted under her father’s and brother’s reigns.  More exactly, when Mary came to power, she was determined to alter the law to accommodate the nations and rulers who had always supported her, her own devotion to the Catholic faith aside.  Ironically, Philip would urge her to ease the heresy statutes, yet even that was due to his concerns regarding lessening English hostility toward himself and his perceived, foreign influence on Mary (Wickins 200).  Much of the same, complex turmoil would later confront Elizabeth, who was determined to exercise moderate policy in matters of faith.  Upon her ascension in 1558, Protestantism again became the state religion, but Elizabeth refrained from pursuing Catholics.  For several decades, the strategy was largely successful.  Laws were in effect greatly biased against Catholics, but Elizabeth usually chose to ignore transgression.  It would be the external, political threat of military action from Catholic Spain that would generate legal response.  Once again, religion and treason were synonymous, and the issue was profoundly reinforced when the pope excommunicated her, and actually encouraged English Catholics to rebel.  The dormant statutes were made active, and Catholic priests and citizens were arrested, interrogated, and sometimes executed (Vidmar  226)..  The law, again, was mobilized fully in faith-based affairs because non-compliance of worship translated to treason.

The evolution of English law is subject to varying interpretations in regard to impact and actual timing.  It is held, for example, that the law has changed only by slow processes until recent centuries: “English law developed at relatively gentle pace until the end of the 18th century, but as Britain moved into the industrial age, the pace of legal change quickened”  (Riches, Allen  12).  Such a view, however, ignore the rapid and striking shifts of the 16^th century, as noted above.  At the same time, this view is substantiated by a longstanding facet of English law,  and one in which British ideology seems to have translated into statute: the English response to debt. Beginning with Henry VIII in 1542, bankruptcy took on a very different meaning within the nation.  In prior centuries, it seems English life had accepted virtually feudal definitions of status.  There were responsible citizens with land and income, and there were peasants or vagrants.  The latter had recourse to charity from the vast monastic systems in place, long established from England’s ties with the Catholic Church of Rome.  Henry famously severed this link, which created an immense, commercial interest in monastic lands; suddenly, huge estates were now available for patronage and private gain.  Equally importantly, the poor were then more conspicuous, and more of a threat to the national well-being; there was, simply, no on to provide for them.  Consequently, debt became criminalized.  Long sentences were set out for those in debt, with no trial process, even as in Henry’s day death was also a legal punishment (Platt  24).  External forces of society play a unique role here, as some of England’s most esteemed writer have been both victims of debt law.  Charles Dickens, notably, drew on his father’s stay in debtors prison in several novels (Adamson 531).  Essentially, and particularly in the 19^th century, strong conservative forces in the English social order veered dramatically on the side of commercial interests.  The circumstances of debtor imprisonment seem to a modern mind inherently irrational, but the ideology behind jailing the debtor relied on an assumption that family or friends would pay the debt.  As it happened, what more often transpired is that the families of the debtor actually moved in with the individual, and for years.  Even later insolvency laws did not release the debtor from anything but prison, as the law still required that creditors be paid (Platt  26).  In a sense, this instance of English law as reflecting societal influences underscores centuries of tradition, wherein the forces shaping the society are expressed, and somewhat dramatically, in the laws governing it.  Just as discontent among wealthy barons initiated the Magna Carta as a protection of rights, so too did debtors prison reflect the society’s insistence on creating parity between individual and creditor, if with a less admirable outcome.

Conclusion

Given the extraordinary duration of English history itself, it is virtually impossible to gain a real sense of how external forces shaped the nation’s laws in any brief presentation.  Nonetheless, major events serve to illustrate the connections.  The Magna Carta famously reveals how a vast chain of circumstances, internal and external, can trigger the foundation for a republic out of a despotic monarchy; the confusions and trauma of the 16^th century provide strong evidence of how English law evolved to meet shifting governmental agendas in regard to religion; and the centuries-old, and rationally untenable, addressing of debt in England shows how the cultural identity of the nation was expressed in legal action.  Ultimately, then, it could be argued that no better model in Western history exists than the English, in presenting how external influences may shape the law itself.

Works Cited

Adamson, J. E.  Law for Business and Personal Use.  Belmont: Cengage Learning, 2008.  Print.

Platt, H. D.  Principles of Corporate Renewal, 2^nd Ed.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.  Print.

Riches, S., & Allen, V.  Keenan and Riches’ Business Law, 10^th Ed.  Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2011.  Print.

Siegan, B. H.  Property Rights: From Magna Carta to the Fourteenth Amendment.  New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001. Print.

Vidmar, J.  The Catholic Church through the Ages: A History.  Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2005.  Print.

Wickins, P.  Victorian Protestantism and Bloody Mary: The Legacy of Religious Persecution in Tudor England.  St. Edmunds, UK: Arena Books, 2012.  Print.